1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a global job distribution system and more particularly to assigning computational tasks according to a selectable set of criteria.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently large national and multinational corporations rely on high-end computing power to enable and/or efficiently operate their businesses. To satisfy the continually increasing demand for computing power in these organizations, sets of servers and memory units are grouped together into clusters which are commonly known as server farms. These server farms, with their concentration of high performance CPUs, require significant amounts of electrical energy to operate. Energy demand for these server farms is further increased by operating the air conditioning or other mechanical chilling/cooling systems to keep the computing equipment cool. Server energy demand has driven at least one large scale data processing company to locate their newest server farms close to an economical power source such as a hydroelectric dam.
While multi-national companies operate clusters or farms of servers at multiple locations in the U.S. and throughout the world to handle data processing workload, a job assignment to a particular server in a particular cluster is still largely performed on a local basis where the job submitter selects a particular cluster by logging into the cluster, or is part of a group of users assigned to a cluster by geographical region. This workload may come from within a company, from customers accessing company databases via the Intranet or Internet or through data-processing lease agreements where a company without servers leases server capability from an enterprise company. Recently, some attention within the data processing community has been devoted to allocating data processing resource on a global level in order to optimally utilize available resource. In those instances where the workload on the servers is considered when assigning data processing or other computer jobs to a particular server node and server, no consideration is given in the job dispatching process to the sources of energy which will be used to power the server farm (coal, oil, nuclear, hydro, solar), the local cost of energy or the condition of the local energy grid. As a result, job dispatch is not conducted in a manner which can minimize operational costs and/or use the most environmentally friendly energy sources while performing the necessary data processing workload. Furthermore, company data processing operations may come into direct conflict with the needs of the local community during those periods when the electrical grid is under stress.